The remainder of George W. Bush's presidency may well hinge on the speech he plans to give on Monday. If Bush has somehow come to realise this, and why it is so, he may be able to turn things around for himself. If not, then the Republican party is likely to lose big this November... and if the Democrats regain a majority in Congress, the last two years of Bush's term will be scarred by a massive recession, not to mention the vindictive and very personal impeachment of the President while we are at war.

The Democrats' plan, should they gain control, has already been laid out by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). They will try to reverse pretty much every law written in the past six years, especially those passed to keep the nation safe in the wake of 9/11. They will raise taxes as well as the minimum wage, both of which will cause the economy to reverse its great gains. Democrats will launch a series of trumped-up hearings and investigations aimed at finding some way to support their pre-planned impeachment of President Bush. Meanwhile, Iran will gain nuclear capability unopposed, and we Americans will get to watch our military run away from yet another war we are actually winning. Of course, the border with Mexico will remain just as open as it is today. After all, the Democrats won't want to stop the flow of new voters and new government dependents once they've regained power.

Insiders say that the President plans to put the National Guard on the border, to show the American people he's serious about border security. If that's all he does, however, the vast majority of us are not going to buy it. First of all, merely sending them to the border is no guarantee they'll be doing anything to stop illegal immigration. Arizona's Democratic Governor, Janet Napolitano, tried to fool the voters with that ruse not long ago. She claimed she had deployed the Guard to reinforce security on the Arizona border, but it turned out they were performing vehicle inspections at checkpoints, not stopping illegal crossings between those checkpoints.

Unless the President plans to stand them shoulder-to-shoulder along the entire length of the border 24 hours a day, humans alone cannot take the place of a wall. Walls don't sleep, they don't look the wrong way at the wrong time and they don't leave. If the President's only security proposal is augmented border patrols, even with UAVs and other electronic detection capabilities, it'll be just a temporary sop to our anger over loose security. As quickly as they can be deployed to the border, the National Guard can be withdrawn. An actual wall, on the other hand, would be harder to remove.

If the President wants us to believe he's finally heard our demands for a secure border, he won't waste the entire speech talking about "jobs Americans won't do" -- a crock if there ever was one. It's "wages Americans won't pay" that creates a market for illegal labor in the first place. He won't waste time cadging support for amnesty by telling us how illegal immigrants are good-hearted people who just want to feed their families. By that measure, if I steal a car in order to go to work to feed my family, not only should I be forgiven, but allowed to keep the car.

President Bush wants to keep his amnesty hopes alive, without losing Congress to the Democrats in the upcoming election. His only hope for doing so is to abandon his support for a "comprehensive" immigration reform bill until we see a more secure border. The majority of Americans are not willing to even discuss amnesty -- whatever it's called -- while the borders are still wide open to more lawbreakers.

The House passed a law enforcement and border control package that left the problem of how to deal with the12 million or so illegal immigrants for a later bill. The Senate verges on passing a bill that provides almost no law enforcement whatsoever, while giving illegals a slap on the wrist and a way to gain US citizenship. Guess which one Americans prefer by a 2-to-1 margin? "81 percent of Republicans, 72 percent of independents, 57 percent of Democrats, and 53 percent of Hispanics" thought the House bill was a "good or very good idea."

That same bill was reviled by hordes of foreign criminals brazenly marching in our streets, waving Mexican flags and Spanish signs ordering us to leave "their" land. There are so many of them that they feel they can tell us what laws to pass. We must stop the influx of new criminals before we can discuss how to deal with those already here. And merely beefing up the woefully undermanned Border Patrol with a few National Guard troops until the furor subsides isn't going to do that. We need a three-pronged approach: more border patrol agents, a real barrier and increased law enforcement against employers who hire illegals.

It's all up to President Bush. If he gets this right, the Republicans will surely retain a majority in both House and Senate, if not gain control. (Control would require a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, which is unlikely to happen.) If he gets it wrong, it could be the beginning of a long, slow-motion disaster for all of us.